By Erin Elizabeth Austin

Because I'm a college graduate, I have taken many classes over the course of my life. From Hermeneutics to American Literature, I've taken part in a number of courses, but the class which ranks first in my list of all-time most interesting classes would have to be my hugging class.

As crazy as this sounds, I did have to take a hugging class; it was a job requirement for the children's home where I worked. The reason for this is because the majority of people do not know how to properly hug. There's the side hug, the pat-on-the-back hug, the squeeze-the-stuffing-out-of-a-person hug, the won't-let-you-go hug, and the if-this-is-really-necessary hug. All of these hugs send negative subliminal messages. A good hug makes a person feel safe, secure, loved, and cherished. It lets a person know someone cares about him.

I was reminded of my hugging class as I studied Philippians 1:9-11. In verse nine, Paul says we are to be filled with love for others and it should abound. As I studied the original language of these verses, I was surprised at what Paul was actually saying. The word used for love is agape, and it means God's love. The word used for abound means "to be over and above; abundant." In verse ten when Paul says our love should be sincere and blameless, the word blameless actually means "not causing  to stumble." So if we take the literal translation of what Paul is saying, we are told to be filled with God's love for others and that love should be abundant. We should go over and above how we would normally love others, and we shouldn't love people in such a way that would cause them to stumble.

Philippians 1:9-11 is Paul's version of hugging school. He is teaching us how to love others in such a way that we make them see God's love in a powerful way. When we do this, people will feel cherished, loved, and cared for by God. Yet if we don't love others with God's love, people will feel cast aside, uncared for, unvalued, and unappreciated.

Suffering with a chronic illness has given me the chance to see the difference between a hugging school graduate and a hugging school dropout. A hugging school dropout is a person who is uncomfortable with suffering. 

Qualifications of a Hugging School Dropout

• These are people who throw out Bible verses such as Romans 8:28 and don't stop to think what the person suffering is actually experiencing. Quoting Scripture without truly listening to what the other person is saying makes the one suffering feel like he or she is a bad Christian. It makes him feel like he is letting God down, because he isn't constantly filled with happiness and faith.
  

• Another mistake made by the hugging school dropout is that he feels like he has to say something to the person who is sick, but he doesn't know what to say. Consequently, all this person does is ask the sick person what's happening with his sickness. Unbeknownst to the dropout, this makes the sick person feel as if there is nothing more to him than being sick. He has no value outside of his sickness.
  

• The final mistake a hugging school dropout makes is avoidance of the one suffering. Because of the dropout's discomfort with suffering, he will sometimes avoid the person facing a sickness altogether. Although he doesn't mean to, his avoidance makes the one suffering feel like there is something wrong with him. It makes him feel deformed, rejected, and like a burden to others.
  

I've met my share of hugging school dropouts. Unfortunately, more Christians have dropped out of hugging school because they believe they know how to love others. For a long time, I felt the same way. It wasn't until I became sick that I realized no one loves as well as God loves. Only God can take a person in the worst moment of his life, and make him feel safe, secure, valued, and special. Thankfully, God empowers each of us to love others the way that He loves us.

So will you be a hugging school graduate or a hugging school dropout? The choice is up to you, but speaking as someone who's experienced God's abounding love through others, the world needs more hugging school graduates.

"So this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much, but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush. Live a lover's life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God." ~ Philippians 1:9-11 (The Message)

© July 9, 2012

By Josie Siler

I’m a little OCD. I don’t have the disorder, but I do have obsessive compulsive tendencies. I prefer to call it my routine! When I was attending Seminary, I lived in a house with four other girls. One night as I was getting ready for bed, my roommate (who just so happened to be getting a clinical counseling degree) started to list off everything I was doing to get ready for bed one step before I did it. I hadn’t even realized I had a routine, but she had it down! She knew what each of my next steps were before I took them. Hmmm, I wonder what else she observed about me…I didn’t ask…sometimes it’s better not to know! Sickness has thrown a wrench in my routines, however there are certain things that I always do in a specific order.

Think about your morning routine. What do you do as soon as you wake up? Do you take your medication before you get out of bed and rest until they start kicking in? Maybe you take them as you eat breakfast. Do you get dressed right away or stay in your pj’s as long as possible? As you’re thinking about your morning routine, let me ask you this…

Have you put on your armor today? Is putting on your spiritual armor a part of your routine? We talked about putting on the belt of truth. We need this belt not only to hold everything in place, but to make sure that the voice we listen to is the voice of truth, the voice of God. In order to stand against the attacks of the evil one, which we will undoubtedly face today, we must put on not only the belt of truth, but the breastplate of righteousness. Ephesians 6:14 commands us to, “Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness.”

The breastplate of righteousness is an interesting piece of armor. The Bible tells us that we can’t achieve righteousness on our own. “As the Scriptures say, ‘No one is righteous—not even one (Romans 3:10, NLT).’”This may seem hopeless, but thankfully for us, God sent His very own Son, Jesus, to die on a cross as payment for our sins. “We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are. For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when He freed us from the penalty for our sins (Romans 3:22-24).”

When we put on the breastplate of righteousness, we are really putting on Jesus! It is through Him and Him alone that we can be found righteous. When we have Jesus protecting our heart, the very core of our body, we don’t need to be afraid of what may come at us in this life. Jesus is our protector, our vindicator, and our Savior. He is all we need, and we sure do need Him! 

When we associate something new with something that is already part of our routine, it makes it easier to remember. That being said, this week let’s try something. Every morning when we take our medications, let’s put on the belt of truth and the breastplate of righteousness and see what happens. Remember friends, there’s an epic battle raging and we’re a part of it. So tell me, have you put on Jesus today?

“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” –Romans 5:3-6, ESV

© June 16, 2013

By Kathy Sebright

The truth is I don’t know what it is like to be sick.  I am 30 years old and have been in good health most of my life. I am a distance runner who regularly puts more mileage on her shoes in a week than on her car. I don’t take any medications, I don’t have any specialists, I don’t undergo surgeries or procedures, and I don’t have a medical history.  So why am I even talking to you? What on earth can we possibly have in common? 

I have been down in the pit, you know the one. Down so deep, I couldn’t be reached, reasoned with, or comforted. The pit is empty and hopeless, full of only fear and uncertainty. There is only lateral movement allowed in the pit, never up and never forward. You are stuck there in this dark limbo until you choose to climb out. When I hit the bottom of that pit, in true Kathy Sebright fashion, I crossed my arms and refused to let anyone help me out.  To call me stubborn is a laughable understatement. It is true ten thousand times over. Why shouldn’t I just stay in the pit?

By Erin Elizabeth Austin

I have an addiction. It's not a normal addiction to something like alcohol or drugs; it's an addiction to sweets. This wouldn't be such a bad thing, except for the fact that I have been diagnosed with gluten-sensitivity. For the non-bakers out there, almost all desserts are made using flour - aka gluten. Every cookie, cake, and pie has gluten in it. But needing to feed my addiction to desserts, my cool sense of logic prevailed and I realized that the majority of pies only have gluten in the crust. The delicious filling does not contain flour, which means I can enjoy the best part of key lime, pecan, apple, and chocolate pies. Armed with this knowledge, I have now mastered the art of eating pie. I have learned how to eat the inner goodness of a pie without letting my fork touch the crust. No knife is required. When I am finished satisfying my sweet tooth, the pie crust is left perfectly intact so someone else can enjoy it.

Now I know what you must be thinking, and yes, one can buy gluten-free food. Many of the gluten-free foods are actually quite tasty. Some brands are so good that it's hard to distinguish the difference between foods containing gluten and those which don't. Yet the dessert mixes still need some work. All cookie and cake mixes I've tried leave me with a bitter aftertaste in my mouth. The only gluten-free dessert which satisfies my sweet tooth is the brownie mix. In fact, the brownies are so good that my family prefers them to the regular brownies. The reason for this is because the gluten-free brownies contain more chocolate, which makes them taste delicious.

The other day, as I was rummaging through my pantry looking for something to satisfy my sweet tooth, I realized that people are often like gluten-free food. 

By Josie Siler

Belts are my friends. They have a very specific job to do and they do it well…most of them anyway. My favorite belt is a Harley Davidson leather belt that is black on one side and brown on the other. That’s right folks, a reversible belt! I wear it almost every day, and you can tell. It’s starting to fall apart, and I don’t know if I will ever find another belt as perfect as that one.

When I read the first part of Ephesians 6:14, “Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth…” I think of my perfect belt. I can stand confidently, knowing that my belt is going to hold my pants where they belong. After I finish laughing at myself, I move on to what Paul is really talking about. I wonder why the belt of truth is the first piece of spiritual armor mentioned. Is it mentioned first because it goes on first? Umm…I don’t think so!

By Erin Elizabeth Austin

I have a confession to make. There is a statement that almost all Christians make which I absolutely cannot stand! It drives me bonkers, and I have to bite my tongue every time I hear someone say it. The statement? “God will never give you more than you can handle.”

Have you ever heard anyone say that? I would love to know who came up with this saying because it isn’t true. I know what you’re thinking.“It’s a Bible verse. Of course it’s true!”  While I do agree that everything in the Bible is true, I don’t agree that this statement is in the Bible. I’ve actually searched Scripture for years to find this so-called verse, but it doesn’t exist. It stems from a verse found in 1 Corinthians 10:13 which says, “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.”

For years I heard people constantly tell me God wouldn’t give me more than I can handle, and that statement haunted me.  I was going through so many difficult things, and it was all too much for me to handle. One of the main reasons why I thought God was a liar stemmed from this saying. Having three illnesses was too much to handle. Having ever increasing medical debt was too much to handle. Having to quit my job, move in with my parents, and apply for disability was too much to handle. Having friends who couldn’t cope with my sickness was too much to handle. Dealing with constant agonizing pain was too much to handle. Thinking I would die before I turned twenty-five was too much to handle. So many bad things happened all at once, and I was left wondering, questioning, doubting in a benevolent God. Either He lied about not giving us more than we can handle or He was choosing to not intervene in my situation, which made Him a cruel, lying dictator. Either way, my problems showed God didn’t care about me, or so I thought. Thankfully, I realized the truth about God before I completely turned my back on Him and walked away. As I studied the Bible, I began to see an important truth. 

We’re going to experience things in our lives that are too much to handle. It’s a fact of life. We live in a fallen world, which means people sin, bodies get sick, and loved ones die. BUT we are not alone! God is always with us. My favorite passage in Scripture is Isaiah 43:1-4. It says, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine! When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, nor will the flame burn you. For I am the Lord your God…You are precious in my sight. You are honored and I love you….”

The secret to “handling” problems comes from turning to God and relying on His strength. He is walking with us through every trial and heartache, but we have to accept the grace and strength He offers us. It is only when we lean on God and gain strength and power through our relationship with Him that we’ll be able to handle the storms of this life.

Whatever you’re going through today, I urge you to lean on God. If you’re dealing with more than you can handle, cry out to God and cling to Him. Let Him be your strength and comfort. I can’t promise that your situation will immediately improve, but I can promise that when you grab hold of God when your life is shattered, He will carry you through this time of pain and hardship. He will fill your mind with peace and your heart with comfort. You may be dealing with more than you can handle, but it’s never too much for God to handle. Let Him handle your situation for you.

“Be strong and courageous, do not be afraid or tremble at them, for the Lord your God is the one who goes with you. He will not fail you or forsake you.” ~ Deuteronomy 31:6

© June 5, 2013